first venture

www.insidefacebook.com

Here’s the sheet with the breakdown of early investors: Mark Zuckerberg manages to hold onto 28.4 percent of Class B shares, which have 10 times the voting power of Class A shares. Facebook said in its filing today that it plans to sell up to $5 billion worth of...

gigaom.com

Verizon Wireless revealed a new incarnation of its old V Cast streaming mobile video service on Tuesday; this one built on the back of its new LTE network. Called Viewdini, the Android app aggregates content from premium video services such as Hulu, mSpot — now a Samsung-owned property — and...

thenextweb.com

Claro will soon launch its VOD portal Claro Video in Brazil, the mobile operator announced in Rio de Janeiro at Futurecom‘s conference. The service will initially roll out to a limited number of Claro clients by the end of the year, before a full launch during 2013′s first quarter. While this...

www.geekwire.com

At the GeekWire Meetup earlier this week, I bumped into Seattle venture capitalist Enrique Godreau. I didn’t get a chance to ask in any great detail what he’s been up to following his departure from Voyager Capital, the Seattle venture firm that he co-founded 15 years ago. But perhaps I...

gigaom.com

One month ago, when online learning site lynda.com announced that it had raised $103 million in its first venture round since launching in 1995, we noted that the company would be well-positioned to buy up other companies in its space. On Wednesday, the Carpinteria, Calif. company said it had started...

thenextweb.com

Saban Brands has acquired kid-safe online content platform Zui to strengthen its position in the kids entertainment segment across all media, the company announced today. The amount of the deal wasn’t disclosed. The startup is best known for Zui.com, which lets children access a curated library of videos and online games as part of a...

venturebeat.com

Image via Flickr user Official GDC Zynga’s rise to a social gaming juggernaut traded on the public markets with a market cap roughly equal to long established companies like Electronic Arts highlights the rapid transformation of the gaming industry. Boston’s Spark Capital, eager to tap the next wave of startups...

techcrunch.com

We now have a foil for all the young consumer startups trying to raise their first venture rounds. Snapchat, an increasingly popular mobile app that auto-deletes photos shortly after viewing, is about to close a big new round of funding from Benchmark Capital. We’ve been chasing for the last week...

www.theverge.com

"It’s hard to ignore how focused and intimate our time is with our phones," Tumblr lead designer Peter Vidani says. "You’re a lot closer to your content. You’re often by yourself." Since Tumblr adopted Tumblerette as its own iPhone client back in 2009, Vidani’s been in charge of creating...

techcrunch.com

There’s been a few walkie-talkie mobile apps that have come out on iOS and Android over the last year or two, but it wasn’t until last fall that when one of them had a breakout moment. Voxer suddenly hit it big with young black people in Cleveland and a few...

techcrunch.com

In the big new world of business intelligence, RJMetrics has found a market helping e-commerce companies easily analyze operations data and make smarter decisions as a result. Big startups have signed on, including Fab, Bonobos, Threadless and thousands of smaller businesses. Today, the momentum has landed the Philadelphia enterprise startup...

techcrunch.com

Gojee, an aesthetically pleasing recipe-sharing site, has raised a first venture round of $2.8 million from InterWest Partners. The New York startup has pivoted its way into a growing site with more than 500,000 registered users — and it’s also been getting attention for its simple and beautiful design. It was nominated for...

pandodaily.com

Many of postulated that every doomed dot com of the late 1990s is actually a viable business started in a reckless environment and way too ahead of its time. Apparently the same goes for trends in the venture capital world. All sorts of harebrained ideas for remaking, scaling, or...

thenextweb.com

Care.com, the service that helps American families find and connect with carers, is launching in the UK today. This is the first venture outside of the US for the Boston-based company which was founded in 2006. Already, there are thousands of carers registered on the UK site and to celebrate...

www.wired.com

Screenshot from studios.amazon.com Amazon is looking for television executives to develop original half-hour kids‘ and comedy series for both online and traditional distribution, according to two new job postings at Amazon.com. The driving force behind these hires is Amazon Studios, which solicits screenplays, pitches and test movies from anyone on...

techcrunch.com

500 Startups is already focused heavily on investing overseas, with partners looking at startups in markets like Mexico, Brazil, India, and Southeast Asia. Now you can add China to the list, as the firm just hired a venture partner to focus on that region. Rui Ma will be joining 500...

allthingsd.com

The idea of dreaming up a physical object and having a computer help you bring it to life — aka 3D printing — is very cool today, but there’s a long way to go. Some of the challenges include faster creation times, more accessible software, a greater variety of materials...

venturebeat.com

The Series A crunch has left the realm of Bigfoot and Nessie and is entering the realm of truth, at least according to Fenwick & West. The law firm released the results of its 2012 Seed Financing Survey today, which found that the number of startups obtaining Series A financing...

Comments on 'Watch out for Bigfoot! 'Series A crunch' sighting reported in Silicon Valley':

www.businessinsider.com

Spark Capital, a Boston-based venture capital firm with investments like Twitter, Tumblr and Admeld, has made a new hire. Former Zynga executive Nabeel Hyatt will join as the firm's first venture partner. He will help lead Spark's investments in consumer Web, social and mobile startups. Hyatt cofounded Conduit Labs,...

gigaom.com

Honest Buildings, a startup that aggregates information about buildings’ energy use and green characteristics, has raised its first round of venture funding led by RockPort Capital and Mohr Davidow Ventures. Previously the startup, which is about a year old, had raised an angel round from Spring Ventures, Jason Scott, Managing...

techcrunch.com

Editor’s note: The following excerpt is from Mastering The VC Game, a new book by Jeffrey Bussgang that goes on sale Thursday. It tells the backstory of Twitter from the perspective of founder Jack Dorsey, from his early obsession with couriers and his attempts to create a better dispatch...

thenextweb.com

In February, 500 Startups’ founder Dave McClure announced that the accelerator/incubator firm was expanding to China, adding the country to an already lengthy list of international markets. 500 Startups has invested in Chinese companies before, but, by bringing Rui Ma on board as its first Venture Partner in Beijing, McClure made...

thenextweb.com

The enterprise email and communication company Atmail has announced a $2 million investment from the Australian fund Starfish Ventures. The company plans to use the funding to “drive product development, expand the technical team, and increase its US, Asia and European focus,” stated Atmail in its press release. Apart from...

venturebeat.com

MicroVentures is an investment marketplace easing the process by which startups interest and gain new investors. The Austin, Texas-based company recently joined forces with social media and game developer Zobee to make the first venture capitalist-themed Facebook game. The title makes a game out of picking the best startups,...

www.geekwire.com

People in India searching for books and movies online have a new option available to them. Amazon has quietly launched amazon.in, a new online marketplace for India. Because of India’s strict Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) regulations, Amazon can’t simply open an extension of its existing e-commerce business in India. Instead,...

thenextweb.com

SK Telecom will soon start offering mobile and online services in Indonesia in a joint venture worth $18 million, as it seeks to make inroads into the Southeast Asian nation’s growing population of connected users, according to Global Post, which cited a Yonhap news agency report on Tuesday. SK Planet,...

www.fastcompany.com

In the 1990s, hip-hop stars everywhere wore Maurice Malone's clothes. By 2001, he was broke. But his new venture is simplicity itself: quality jeans at a reasonable price. Maurice Malone walks into a café in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, his home and base of operations for nearly 20 years, looking suitably...

www.engadget.com

Stop us if you've heard this one before: the launch of a flagship, brand-defining smartphone gives its creator a swift leap in market share immediately afterwards. There's no surprise that the iPhone 5 will have improved Apple's standing in the US, then, but Kantar Worldpanel's market share study suggests...